Hehe... no offense man, but some issues can get pretty sensitive on online music forums...

"Feel/Emotion" vs "Speed/Technical-playing"
"Blues" vs "Shred"
"Jazz" vs "Metal"
"Fender" vs "Gibson"
"DiMarzio" vs "Seymour Duncan"

"No need to learn scales!"
"Who needs a guitar teacher?"



And this one goes specifically to LedZepFreak...

Damn you, I saw that milesssssssss away.
Time to change loh, not fresh d... boooo!

lolz.... shy issit?

Seriously most wicked solos are based on the pentatonic scale. Which has basically 5 notes thus come the term penta-tonic aka 5 tones(1 b3 4 5 b7)(W+H W W W+H W). For example Em pentatonic scale is E, G, A, B, & D and then back to the E octave. You should know tat E minor key is actually relative to the G major key based on the family chord inter-relation. So if the songs in whithin the respective key (lets say key of G major) all the above notes should be in the key of G (E, G, A, B, & D). So to stay in tune you have to keep your soloing within the boundaries of these notes and keys.

Similiar to the Harmonic minor (1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7) (W H W W H W+H H) (E, F#, G, A, B, C & D# and back to E octave)

If you notice most rock solos uses the additional 'blues note' in the Pentatonic scale which is the b5 so blues scale is (1 b3 4 b5 5 b7) (W+H W H H W+H W) (E, G, A, Bb & D and back to octave E)

So my advice is if you wanna play a solo that stays in tune, hit the notes that belongs to the respective key and for you to improvise here's some of my tips, hope it will be useful:

1. Try to feel the music and get the crucial beginning and ending notes of each song part and can try to start and end of the note respectively to the song.

2. Try to kick off the habit on solo-ing on the same box and find out the notes in other parts of the neck and start widening your octave range.

3. Tryin starting your solo on different keys in the scale be it either pentatonic, blues or harmonic minor.

4. Try hitting on different notes out of the normal scale once in awhile and start experimenting. Because all scales are inter-related and it's just a matter of different combination of notes and keys that produces that respective scale.

5.HEARIN!!! it's very crucial for you to hear what you play. If it doesn't sound nice!, then try something else that will sound nice!

6. Don't limit yourself to long epic like solo only. Variead your style, include riffs, licks, and also some mixtures of chord runs.

7. Try not to repeat the same of run. Once repeatative, it gets boring.

8. Try having a mind set of soloing based on the feel of "question and answer". Which means different tone or direction of the tone. Take for example when some one ask you a question, then you answer. Both sentences have a diff feel and tone. It's not monotonous so when you solo, you can do like wise as well. Example if you watch the movie DREAMGIRLS, there's alot of songs in the movie that implemented "question and answer" but only thing it's a vocal wise. So apply vocal voicing of that concept to guitar.

9. Hear lotza diff styles of music like blues, jazz, rock, metal, pop, latin, ballad and classical. Cause all the different genres have a different feel to the whole projection of the music. Start taking various styles that you like and make it your own.

10. Think outside the box. Just let loose and don't think of what to play. JUST PLAY IT.

11. Get various different songs and practice your solo run on it.

This post has been edited by ken0777: Sep 11 2007, 10:22 AM

sometimes just humming or singing out a tune while playing the rhythm can produce some nice melodies as a backbone for your solos. your mouth is more skillful than your hands... (gosh that sounds dirty)

melody is important! you can create beautiful melodies with just 1 pentatonic box.